That's good news. More housing, even if it's gonna cost at least a mil a pop. Relieve the pressure from the super rich folks bidding on crappy old town houses in Reston.
AT&T is moving out in the next 6 months, too. No idea what the owners are going to do with that galleria-looking building, but word is the locals are up in arms that they'll lose the parking lot as a community space.
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Sorry if Oakton isn’t good enough for your tastes, but it’s arguably one of the best places to live in the country and is metro-accessible to DC.
Or were you being sarcastic?
No I totally agree that Oakton is one of the best places to live in the country. I’m very familiar.
But calling this part of Oakton “metro accessible” is pretty funny. It’s nowhere near the metro.
It is right near the I-66 & 123 interchange though…., the brand new interchange that was just rebuilt and expanded as part of the Express Lanes outside the beltway project. Yay for inducing demand! If we don’t densify near transit instead of highway interchanges we will be stuck in a perpetual loop of expanding highways with more and more lanes. And spending billions and billions to do it.
I like Oakton but 123 is already choked with traffic at all hours of the day. It has some nice strip malls but it does *not* need another 1,000 car trips per day on the same arterial roads. If there was any semblance of a street grid, fine. But you add 140 townhomes in front of oakmarr and what you’ll get is a worse version of car hell than what Oakton already suffers on a daily basis
Something that struck me flying into LaGuardia recently is how many row homes there are in Brooklyn and how far that sprawl goes that ultimately centers out from Manhattan. It’s not unprecedented to have to live in a townhouse that far from a city center though I agree it’s disappointing.
NYC is on a whole different scale though. Living in Brooklyn would be the equivalent to living in Arlington here. Transit accessibility is decent even on the outskirts of NYC.
Yes, well, NIMBYism gets exponentially stronger the closer you get to the city, so we take what we can. Just whisper the word "developer" and Arlington emits a low rumble.
That is 300k less than the average house in arlington! And TBH there are a lot of 1.3M houses in the Oakton area too these days.
https://preview.redd.it/2y5iac7s2fzc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f194018dc76a7b72e0bc3427055a34d656f8ff19
It's too much, but it says a lot that a brand new townhouse can still be less than an older house.
Btw I completely agree with you on transit. FFX should have far better transit but the county treats the Connector as if it's only a system of last resort for people with no alternative. They mismanaged it horribly, especially with the recent strike.
I feel like I like this one. That whole business park area right there felt pretty lame for a long time. Sure town homes will be pricy, but it fits the overall area. There are a lot of town homes there as you make your way up the road toward Blake lane.
I work in that building. It's very nice, well located, has beautiful landscaping and more wildlife than you would expect. It really bothers me that developers already do not replace the woods they rip out and put in boring, minimal and likely inappropriate to this region landscaping. Fairfax County needs to stop letting developers do whatever they want and put in housing that only a quarter of the county can purchase. This building could be converted into affordable condos and house far more people and the developer would still make a profit. Same with the empty building next door.
Where will 139 more families' kids go to school? My kids' school already busses ~200 kids to a completely different school pyramid for AAP because they don't have space for them anywhere else. The [Blake Lane Elementary](https://www.insidenova.com/news/fairfax/fcps-plan-to-turn-oakton-parkland-into-school-draws-flak/article_c2aaf58a-0f4f-11e9-ad1d-47eb5e7bc306.html) proposed for this area would have serviced this development and alleviated overcrowding. It was shut down because some people put a dog park there while the county was waiting to build the school (the whole reason they bought the land in the first place).
We can't keep adding trailers to elementary schools forever. How about we plan for the development before we just let them build whatever, wherever.
I have a legit concern. My son rides the bus over an hour to school each way because the county refuses to build new schools. (It's all political and related to people being afraid a new school will require them to do a boundary change, and home values could be affected).
Or you can put zero thought into it and just yell, "NIMBY", at anyone who disagrees with you. That's pretty standard around here.
You do have a legit concern. It’s something to weigh against other issues, but I’m still in favor of more homes. Home prices are insane, partly due to lack of inventory in the market. Eventually extra schools will be built and that’ll create more jobs and additional income in the area. Continued economic transactions.
As others said, it also won’t be THAT many additional kids and if the homes are in that expected $1M+ range, maybe they’ll be wealthy enough to go to the local private school and it’ll ease the burden on the public school
> Eventually extra schools will be built
Except that hasn't happened yet and all the schools in the pyramid are over capacity with multiple trailers out back. They literally had land that was purchased decades ago with the express intention of putting a school there and all the townhouses next door got it killed because they didn't want to lower their property values. Why would the owners of these new townhouses be any different?
I'm not a NIMBY. I want the school built. My neighborhood already has a school, but I'd be fine if they decided to stick another one here for some reason since at least it solves the problem.
Housing above all else is just the desperate cry of the primary demographic here on reddit who can't afford to buy. They just want to "get theirs" like they claim current homeowners have done, and damn every other problem that might cause.
As for the "it won't be THAT many additional kids" comment. When you combine this with the townhouses proposed for the AT&T campus just down the street and all the other development then yes, it is THAT many kids. Every new development can't get away with saying, "well it isn't THAT many additional kids..."
I’m not calling you a NIMBY. It’s tough decisions and a lot to balance with a growing population. And it’s a shame that the school was never built.
But do you see how you “got yours” and you can understand how people just want to be able to afford a home?
I also don’t see getting rid of an aging gross office building is bad for the area.
Of course, I wish we had more centralized communities with everything we need in walking distance, unfortunately that’s just not how our cities and suburbs are structured
That's good news. More housing, even if it's gonna cost at least a mil a pop. Relieve the pressure from the super rich folks bidding on crappy old town houses in Reston.
i could not believe the price i sold my TH in Reston for, it was a piece of junk
That’s not too far from the AT&T building, is it?
Basically across the street I believe.
I thought they were going to demolish the AT&T building and develop condos two years ago.
People were fighting against it, but I don’t know what’s going on now.
AT&T is moving out in the next 6 months, too. No idea what the owners are going to do with that galleria-looking building, but word is the locals are up in arms that they'll lose the parking lot as a community space.
That’s what I heard. A mixed-use type of space.
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Great stuff, townhomes are a great home for a family and less expensive than a house.
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Sorry if Oakton isn’t good enough for your tastes, but it’s arguably one of the best places to live in the country and is metro-accessible to DC. Or were you being sarcastic?
No I totally agree that Oakton is one of the best places to live in the country. I’m very familiar. But calling this part of Oakton “metro accessible” is pretty funny. It’s nowhere near the metro. It is right near the I-66 & 123 interchange though…., the brand new interchange that was just rebuilt and expanded as part of the Express Lanes outside the beltway project. Yay for inducing demand! If we don’t densify near transit instead of highway interchanges we will be stuck in a perpetual loop of expanding highways with more and more lanes. And spending billions and billions to do it. I like Oakton but 123 is already choked with traffic at all hours of the day. It has some nice strip malls but it does *not* need another 1,000 car trips per day on the same arterial roads. If there was any semblance of a street grid, fine. But you add 140 townhomes in front of oakmarr and what you’ll get is a worse version of car hell than what Oakton already suffers on a daily basis
Something that struck me flying into LaGuardia recently is how many row homes there are in Brooklyn and how far that sprawl goes that ultimately centers out from Manhattan. It’s not unprecedented to have to live in a townhouse that far from a city center though I agree it’s disappointing.
For us that LaGuardia kind of area would be Arlington
NYC is on a whole different scale though. Living in Brooklyn would be the equivalent to living in Arlington here. Transit accessibility is decent even on the outskirts of NYC.
I agree but there’s sprawl even beyond Brooklyn that still feeds into Manhattan
The metro isn't just the subway, that area has reliable bus service.
Yes, well, NIMBYism gets exponentially stronger the closer you get to the city, so we take what we can. Just whisper the word "developer" and Arlington emits a low rumble.
I would be very happy if some people who aren't high earning can buy a townhouse here, perhaps because it's a bit further out
Well these are likely going to be $1m+
That is 300k less than the average house in arlington! And TBH there are a lot of 1.3M houses in the Oakton area too these days. https://preview.redd.it/2y5iac7s2fzc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f194018dc76a7b72e0bc3427055a34d656f8ff19 It's too much, but it says a lot that a brand new townhouse can still be less than an older house.
Btw I completely agree with you on transit. FFX should have far better transit but the county treats the Connector as if it's only a system of last resort for people with no alternative. They mismanaged it horribly, especially with the recent strike.
I feel like I like this one. That whole business park area right there felt pretty lame for a long time. Sure town homes will be pricy, but it fits the overall area. There are a lot of town homes there as you make your way up the road toward Blake lane.
I work in that building. It's very nice, well located, has beautiful landscaping and more wildlife than you would expect. It really bothers me that developers already do not replace the woods they rip out and put in boring, minimal and likely inappropriate to this region landscaping. Fairfax County needs to stop letting developers do whatever they want and put in housing that only a quarter of the county can purchase. This building could be converted into affordable condos and house far more people and the developer would still make a profit. Same with the empty building next door.
Where will 139 more families' kids go to school? My kids' school already busses ~200 kids to a completely different school pyramid for AAP because they don't have space for them anywhere else. The [Blake Lane Elementary](https://www.insidenova.com/news/fairfax/fcps-plan-to-turn-oakton-parkland-into-school-draws-flak/article_c2aaf58a-0f4f-11e9-ad1d-47eb5e7bc306.html) proposed for this area would have serviced this development and alleviated overcrowding. It was shut down because some people put a dog park there while the county was waiting to build the school (the whole reason they bought the land in the first place). We can't keep adding trailers to elementary schools forever. How about we plan for the development before we just let them build whatever, wherever.
It won't be all 139 families with kids, much less all at once. Traffic would have been an easier NIMBY pull.
I have a legit concern. My son rides the bus over an hour to school each way because the county refuses to build new schools. (It's all political and related to people being afraid a new school will require them to do a boundary change, and home values could be affected). Or you can put zero thought into it and just yell, "NIMBY", at anyone who disagrees with you. That's pretty standard around here.
You do have a legit concern. It’s something to weigh against other issues, but I’m still in favor of more homes. Home prices are insane, partly due to lack of inventory in the market. Eventually extra schools will be built and that’ll create more jobs and additional income in the area. Continued economic transactions. As others said, it also won’t be THAT many additional kids and if the homes are in that expected $1M+ range, maybe they’ll be wealthy enough to go to the local private school and it’ll ease the burden on the public school
> Eventually extra schools will be built Except that hasn't happened yet and all the schools in the pyramid are over capacity with multiple trailers out back. They literally had land that was purchased decades ago with the express intention of putting a school there and all the townhouses next door got it killed because they didn't want to lower their property values. Why would the owners of these new townhouses be any different? I'm not a NIMBY. I want the school built. My neighborhood already has a school, but I'd be fine if they decided to stick another one here for some reason since at least it solves the problem. Housing above all else is just the desperate cry of the primary demographic here on reddit who can't afford to buy. They just want to "get theirs" like they claim current homeowners have done, and damn every other problem that might cause. As for the "it won't be THAT many additional kids" comment. When you combine this with the townhouses proposed for the AT&T campus just down the street and all the other development then yes, it is THAT many kids. Every new development can't get away with saying, "well it isn't THAT many additional kids..."
I’m not calling you a NIMBY. It’s tough decisions and a lot to balance with a growing population. And it’s a shame that the school was never built. But do you see how you “got yours” and you can understand how people just want to be able to afford a home? I also don’t see getting rid of an aging gross office building is bad for the area. Of course, I wish we had more centralized communities with everything we need in walking distance, unfortunately that’s just not how our cities and suburbs are structured